A rider inside a 229-square-mile boundary receiving a “location not available” error captures the central tension in Tesla’s Houston Tesla Robotaxi rollout. Tesla announced the expanded geofence with the phrase “Houston, we have liftoff,” drawing the boundary in a rocket shape, an apparent reference to Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
The added area extends from northwest Harris County toward downtown Houston and Bellaire. By comparison, Waymo’s Houston operating zone is estimated at roughly 50 square miles, though the Tesla figure represents additional coverage rather than total zone size.
The App Says Yes; the Service Says Otherwise
Users posting to X documented pickup rejections and a 40-minute route estimate for a two-block trip.
Ethan McKanna, founder of RobotaxiTracker, posted a screen recording showing the Tesla Robotaxi app returning a “location not available” error at downtown Houston addresses that appear inside the published geofence, according to Electrek. The exact canonical URL for that X post must be confirmed before publication.
The app also returned a trip estimate of roughly 40 minutes for a ride covering two downtown blocks. That suggested route looped through Midtown, the Museum District, and the Texas Medical Center before returning north.
“40 min ride to cross 2 blocks downtown. this is pretty rough,” McKanna wrote, as reported by Electrek. He suggested the vehicle may have been avoiding downtown railroad crossings, though Tesla has not publicly confirmed that explanation.
A separate user report cited by Business Insider described a three-hour walk to the nearest available pickup point. That example illustrates how far a nominal service boundary can diverge from practical availability.
One Trip That Actually Worked
A 13-mile commute completed by Robotaxi was slower than driving, but the autonomous ride itself was uneventful.
Tesla enthusiast and content creator Hy Luu documented a roughly 13-mile Robotaxi commute from his home to his office, with a vehicle wait of about 25 minutes. He was picked up at 8 a.m. and arrived at 9:23 a.m.; Luu said the same commute in his own Model 3 with Full Self-Driving (Supervised) typically takes about 45 minutes, according to Business Insider. Readers weighing the cost of electric vehicle ownership versus robotaxi use may find those trade-offs relevant.
“I think most people would not use this service as it is now because of the wait times for the car coming and then the detours it takes,” Luu told Business Insider.
Mixed Assessment From Early Testers
McKanna’s overall read was measured, and routing detours are a documented issue for competitors as well.
McKanna described the Houston service as feeling good overall, citing reasonable wait times, a large operating area, and a better ride experience than some of his recent Waymo trips, according to Business Insider. His comments were mixed rather than a wholesale dismissal of the service.
Routing irregularities are not exclusive to Tesla. Business Insider has previously reported Waymo vehicles avoiding faster road alternatives in certain situations. Autonomous fleets may restrict railroad crossings, highways, or roads outside their validated operating domain; those factors may not account for every reported detour.
Fleet Size Remains an Open Question
Active passenger counts in Houston are unconfirmed, and Tesla has not released an official fleet figure.
Available reporting does not identify an official Tesla fleet count for Houston, and registration status alone does not establish how many vehicles are actively serving passengers. These reports suggest that, until pickup acceptance and routing match the scale of the published boundary, the service may reinforce an experimental impression among riders, regardless of how smoothly the autonomous driving performs on the streets it does accept.
